First Look: Blend S

Premise

Sakuranomiya Maika is desperate for a part-time job, as she’s hoping to save up money to travel abroad. Unfortunately she has naturally scary eyes, so potential employers end up too frightened to hire her. She’s eventually hired at a themed cafe, and told to be sadistic to the customers.

Euri’s verdict: Mostly just disappointed that I can’t use ‘Bland S’ for my verdict

You know you’ve been watching anime for too long when you know a show like this as the ‘sadistic girl one’ and don’t bat an eyelid. As the premise suggests, this is a show where Maika, our protagonist, is employed to be the sadistic girl at a cafe. She also has coworkers who fit into the other anime cliches, such as tsundere and little sister, with what appears to be a full list of them on the show’s logo. No, this isn’t a bland show, but it’s not a great one either.

It’s pretty apparent that the source material is a 4-koma manga just by the way the gags are set up, but it seems to be going for frequent small laughs instead of building up to a larger gag. Because of this, we get a lot of well-worn jokes, mostly based around either the store owner being a foreigner, or the customers being into the roleplay. Perhaps the kissing gag will land better in Japan, but also it’s still pretty weird to have a photo of you kissing your aunt in a book, Italian or not.

Granted it’s only the first episode, but it did seem to be lopsided in how much time was being spent characterising the girls. We know that the tsundere girl is good at arcade machines and enjoys video games, and the little sister is actually a college student and likes cute things, but what do we know about the protagonist? She has mean eyes and a sister, and that’s about it. Honestly, it felt more like the tsundere girl was the protagonist.

I will admit that while I had written the show off completely early on, it did have its moments. The cast seem pretty likeable too (with the exception of the creeper store owner) so it’s not hard to see that this show will probably get a decent-sized viewership. Personally, I found it difficult to find myself caring when we already have Working!, which is essentially this show but way more enjoyable and less on the nose about its character types, but this is far from the worst thing airing this season.

Jel’s verdict: Like Working! for Pervs

Read the premise and you’ll see why this show was one of my nominees for potential worst show of the season. While it didn’t quite reach those depths, it wasn’t very good either. The concept of an anime about a maid café where everyone acts like anime stereotypes is so many layers of meta that I can’t stand it. Between that, some really lame jokes (like making puns on oni/onii), and cheap changing room fan service, there is nothing original to be found here. The only positive I can think of is that it looks fantastic. It’s very well animated and directed, but that isn’t enough to make it watchable. Pass.

I’m usually the ‘comedy guy’ around here and even if you ignore the dumb premise just the jokes themselves were really bad. It’s looking like Anime-Gataris may be the go to silly anime comedy of the season.